


Cross My Heart, Hope to Die

by scarabeecrivain (aliceecrivain)



Category: Beetlejuice - Perfect/Brown & King
Genre: Canon-Typical Humor, Cuddling, Family Fluff, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, Misunderstandings, Multi, Polyamory Negotiations, Relationship Negotiation, Self-Esteem Issues, Trust Issues, humor's a strong word but you get what I mean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-12-09 08:04:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20991584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aliceecrivain/pseuds/scarabeecrivain
Summary: Adam and Barbara make the mistake of asking if Beetlejuice would like to be in a relationship with them without thinking it through much first. It doesn't go as well as they might have hoped. It's less that he's not interested and more that he doesn't believe them in the first place.





	Cross My Heart, Hope to Die

**Author's Note:**

> so this is, how you say, unoriginal, but the incredible dirth of beetlelands content across the board was weighing on me so I wrote this. kind of ooc as is maybe to be expected, but I did my best. I do love me some shitbag characters that have never experienced love :))

“Barbara…” Adam said, contemplating the ‘J’ tile he was holding between two of his fingers.

They were playing Scrabble which had been a favorite game of theirs when they were alive, but had tragically been thrown out during the move-in process. Fortunately, Lydia was kind enough to procure them another one and if they ignored the “Library Property: Please Return to Front Desk when Finished” stamp on the side, well, maybe that was for the best.

“Yes,” Barbara said, blatantly looking anywhere other than the double letter score space Adam could easily use to get ahead of her if he was paying attention. Luckily he clearly wasn’t. She was more than happy to take advantage of that fact and get a leg up in their—probably eternal—tournament.

“Do you know…how this is supposed to work?” Adam asked, setting the tile aside and pushing up his glasses. He’d had that scrunched look on his face he always had after he’d been working himself up to say something all afternoon. Barbara found it endearing, especially when he actually got around to spitting it out.

She blinked at him and frowned. “…are you messing with me? It’s Scrabble, Adam. You put the letters together to make words, remember?”

“Not that! I know how Scrabble works,” Adam said, mildly indignant. “I meant…you know. The other thing. From yesterday.”

Barbara saw what he was getting at. She sort of wished he had at least let them finish their game before they had the inevitable talk they needed to have about it, but she knew it was nothing more than a distraction, and anyway, they’d brought this on themselves. She sighed. “Not…really.”

Adam gave her a panicked if sympathetic look. “I’m thinking maybe we didn’t think this through.”

Barbara pressed her lips together. That wasn’t quite it. They’d thought it through to the point where they were both aware of their feelings and had shared them with each other as they changed and grew. It was the whole actually-confessing them part they hadn’t been so careful about. “Do you regret it?”

It took a moment to process, but then Adam was shaking his head. “No! I mean…theoretically, no. Do you?”

Barbara shook her head as well.

“I’m just worried about doing something wrong. Neither of us know what we’re doing and he’s well, you know.”

“I know.” Barbara scooted around the board until she was sitting next to Adam and took his hand in hers. “We probably should have planned it out a little better, but we have time. It’s…new and scary, but I’m proud of us, aren’t you? We’re taking risks and leaps of faith. We have all of eternity to screw up and learn from it.”

Adam squeezed back and some of the tension dissolved from his shoulders. He leaned his head onto Barbara’s shoulder. “As long as we’re doing it together, I know it’ll be okay.”

Barbara smiled, that easy, comfortable kind of affection she’d housed for years for her husband swelling sweetly within her. She kissed his temple. “We’ll figure it out.”

Adam sat up a bit, adding his other hand to the pile and turning toward her. “I feel like we should make a plan, you know? Maybe not another ten year one, but like, one with steps. Or rules. And we can all agree on it.”

Barbara nodded. “That’s a good idea. Want to talk now?”

Adam’s bright eyes drifted slowly over to the Scrabble board and snagged directly on that double score spot. He looked back at her sheepishly. “Maybe…after?”

She rolled her eyes at him and shoved at his shoulder but allowed it. She didn’t need him distracted to beat him anyway.

\- -

“Lydia!”

Lydia looked up from where she’d been glaring at a math problem. It wasn’t getting any easier but it was making her feel better. “What? Did you set something on fire again?”

Her bed decompressed as the demon of the house dropped from thin air onto it. He didn’t look overly concerned, but he never did about stuff like that. “No! I’ve been careful with that, you know.”

Lydia snorted and closed her book. “I know. Delia made you pinky-promise after all.”

Beetlejuice grimaced. “How was I supposed to know that was some kind of actual legally binding shit and not just one of her weird fake rituals?”

Lydia laughed at him. “What then?” She raised her eyebrows. “Did you find another possum? Does it have babies? I swear last time that one was super pregnant.”

“Sadly, no,” Beetlejuice admitted. “Buuut I have something hilarious to tell you!”

Hilarious had an extremely wide definition in his vocabulary so Lydia braced herself for anything. The demon had been getting better slowly over the course of the year he’d been living in their house. He’d showed back up about four months after the whole Incident. After some apologizing and light begging he’d been allowed to stay providing he behaved and looked for somewhere else to go.

Ultimately, he hadn’t found anywhere else to be, but he had been trying so he’d been allowed to keep hanging around. Lydia didn’t really mind. They’d had their eye-for-an-eye moment as far as she was concerned. He was good to talk to about weird stuff when other people got sick of hearing it.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Barbara and Adam played a _prank _on me!” he said gleefully.

Lydia blinked, dubious. “Seriously? What’d they do? Pretend to snatch your nose off?”

“No, they asked me to be their _boyfriend_!” Beetlejuice fell onto his back cackling. “Isn’t that rich?”

Lydia’s mind flew in several directions at once. Somehow he always managed to blindside her. She thought she was getting better at expecting anything, but life certainly had a way of proving her wrong. Ultimately nothing intelligible transferred from her brain to her mouth so she stayed silent and Beetlejuice kept talking.

“So of course I play along and I’m like, ‘Sure, I’d love to!’ and they were so in character, they smiled and acted all excited and even _hugged _me,” Beetlejuice wheezed, wiping at his eyes. “Boy, they’ve come a long way.”

“What do you mean?” Lydia asked, still shell-shocked and trying to settle on any particular feeling.

“Well, they know I like ‘em and so they turned it into a joke to try and trick me into thinking they were being serious so they could snatch the rug out from under me later,” Beetlejuice explained, folding his arms behind his head. “Super nasty, super cruel, super personalized. I’m so proud of them.” He sniffed again, floating up about three inches off the bed which was probably for the best. There was already grime smeared on the comforter from where he’d been laying. (The house’s collection of Tide stain sticks had increased exponentially since he’d become a more permanent resident.)

“They have yet to get to the whole trick part but I think I’ll play along when they do, boost their confidence a little, you know? What do you think about crying? Too much? I’m not much of a crier. I’ll need to get them back too…gotta think of something good.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Lydia piped up, shaking herself. She’d mostly settled on confused, but there was a bit of concern there too. Her surrogate ghost parents could be pretty dumb, but that didn’t sound like them. Unfortunately, Beetlejuice could be even dumber. “How do you know it was a prank?”

Beetlejuice turned over onto his stomach and raised his eyebrows unnaturally high at her. “What else would it be? It’s not like they were being honest.”

Lydia found that hard to believe too but—well, she’d heard of that kind of thing before. She’d just never pegged Barbara and Adam for the type. Maybe they were just getting bored…? She shuddered, not wanting to think too hard about it. Adults were weird. “What if they were?”

There were a few beats of silence before Beetlejuice gasped and rose further toward the ceiling. “They even got you in on it! Damn, they’re good. Would you help me too? What’d they give you? I can get you something better. I’ll go find that possum for you and if it’s not pregnant, I bet I could—”

“I’m not in on anything!” Lydia quickly interrupted him.

Beetlejuice didn’t look completely convinced.

She held out her pinky. “Pinky promise.”

He scoffed, but something like horrified confusion flashed across his face. “But—? Come on, Lyds. You _know_ they’re not being serious.”

“All I know is that you can say a lot of things about the Maitlands but they’re not really known for being mean,” Lydia pointed out.

Beetlejuice was still clearly unconvinced. It was less that he didn’t believe what she was saying and more that the alternative was kind of unfathomable to him, probably. Lydia sighed. She didn’t really feel like sorting out this particular issue herself. It was too weird even for her. “Look. We’ll make it a bet. Go up there and call them out. Tell them you caught on to their prank. You shouldn’t baby them. If you figured it out, let them learn their lesson. I bet you it’s not a prank.”

He squinted at her, but he was hard-pressed to turn down a good old fashioned bet. “What’re the stakes?”

“If you’re right and it’s a prank you can…eat my math homework. If I win, you go find that possum for me.” She was quick to amend that last bit. “_Don’t do anything to it_, just find it. I wanna take a better picture of it. I don’t care if it’s pregnant or not.”

Beetlejuice rolled his eyes and muttered “Party pooper” under his breath, but he seemed tempted. A few seconds later and he reached down to shake her hand. “You’re on, scarecrow. I wanna eat the book pages too. I like the way the shiny ones taste.” With that, he promptly floated back up through the ceiling.

Lydia shook herself hard. At least her homework was looking far more appealing than it had been before. She really doubted the Maitlands would do something to purposefully hurt Beetlejuice when he hadn’t done anything to deserve it—other than be his usual gross self, but they’d crossed that bridge a long time ago and all made their peace with it—but even she had to admit that the alternative was, well…unusual.

She shrugged it off and got up to go make a copy of her homework just in case. It wasn’t her problem anyway. She’d ask Barbara about it later.

\- -

“I suppose we’ll all form relationships between each other,” Barbara pointed out. “Like you and I have already. But we’ll also have an overall dynamic between the three of us that we need to be comfortable with too.”

Adam nodded. “Does that mean…should we spend some time one-on-one?”

Barbara considered that. They’d been talking for a little while, mostly reaffirming that they were both comfortable with this. The only progress they’d made so far in terms of rules or planning was an underlined point on the first line stating that if there was to be any touching or kissing Beetlejuice was going to have to acknowledge the existence and importance of personal hygiene.

“Probably,” Barbara said. “That might be easier to start since that’s what we’re used to.”

“If it means I get to spend alone time with you I’m all for it,” Adam joked, one side of lips curling up.

Barbara rolled her eyes at him, but was quietly glad to hear it. It occurred to her after a moment that, even if it was embarrassing, she ought to voice that. “It’s nice to hear things like that still. I think eventually it’ll be different but right now, while it’s still new…”

Adam’s expression softened. “Of course. We should check in more often. We should probably also spend more time as a group than in pairs so no one feels isolated.”

Barbara nodded. “That’s good. Write that down.”

Adam did. “What else?”

Physical intimacy crossed Barbara’s mind but she didn’t have a chance to consider how to bring that up because the unspoken topic of their conversation floated up through the ceiling. Adam all but chucked the notebook across the room which was a little unnecessary, but Barbara got it. Neither of them wanted to share it until they were ready this time.

Thankfully Beetlejuice didn’t seem to notice both of them jumping a little at his impromptu entrance. He crossed his arms at them and tutted. The Maitlands exchanged a confused look which didn’t really help anything.

“Sorry guys, but I’m here to tell you that you’ve been found out,” he announced, checking his nails to feign nonchalance. “It was a good first try, but you can’t trick the master so easily.”

Barbara was always impressed with how talking to the demon was sometimes more confusing than not talking to him. “What are you talking about, BJ?”

Beetlejuice scoffed. “Like you don’t know. Yesterday? The jig’s up. I know it was a prank. I knew it was a prank when I floated out of here in pretend-delight. I was trying to give you guys time to finish and get to the second part, but you missed your chance. Good concept but you gotta work on your timing. If the timing is off, everything is off.”

“Prank?” Adam repeated.

“You’re so cute when you play dumb,” Beetlejuice said offhand. “You don’t have to keep it up though. That’s the point. I caught you. I know it was a joke.”

Realization dawned in Barbara’s mind and it caused something in her gut to twist, partly out of irritation that he would think they’d joke about something like that and partly out of something sadder. “But it wasn’t a joke,” Barbara insisted, rising to her feet and holding up her hands.

Beetlejuice’s expression shifted into something tighter around the sides of his mouth and eyes, and Barbara swore she could see some red cropping up around the roots of his hair. “I told you to knock it off. It’s not cool to be a sore loser.”

“It’s not an act,” Adam rallied, having stood up as well. “We hadn’t really planned to ask you right then and there but it was an honest question. We weren’t trying to trick you.”

The demon’s eyes flicked between the two of them and red crept up through his hairline. Barbara had a sinking feeling that they weren’t getting through to him. “Look, I get it. It’s low-hanging fruit, but you guys keep telling me to ‘use my words’ and I’m telling you to _stop_ _lying to me_.”

“We’re not,” Barbara insisted, stepping forward a couple of steps. It didn’t help. Beetlejuice retreated almost double the amount, back across the space. She extended a hand instead. “We really like you, Beej. And…obviously we don’t know a whole lot about stuff like this, but we want to try it if you do.”

Adam stepped up beside her. “Let’s talk about it. That’s what we were doing before anyway. You should be a part of it too.”

Beetlejuice was in a darker corner of the attic so it was difficult to see his expression but it looked as though he was trying very hard to think up a retort. When he spoke his voice was rougher than usual. “I know I’m a demon, but at least I don’t fuck with people’s feelings. If you’ve got a problem with me, say it to my face. But I’m done with this bullshit.”

And with that, he seeped deeper into the shadows and was gone. Barbara’s throat ached slightly and she turned to Adam who looked about the same. “Well… this might be harder than we thought.”

\- -

Lydia heard some talking up in the attic—she was not _eavesdropping_; she just happened to need to be by the stairs at the moment—and then some arguing and then some yelling and then silence which didn’t exactly seem good. She swallowed. She knew it wasn’t her business, but she couldn’t help but be concerned. She cared about all three of those dead idiots, after all. She at least wanted to know where everyone stood now.

Slowly she crept up the stairs and knocked quietly on the attic door. It took a moment but then Barbara called, “Who is it?”

“It’s me.”

A beat. “Come in if you want.” That was Adam.

Lydia did, slowly. She cracked the door and peered inside to the find the attic surprisingly intact. The Maitlands were sitting on one of the sofas, looking…not great. She slipped inside and shut the door. “Is everything okay? I heard some yelling.”

Barbara sighed and ran a hand through her hair, gesturing Lydia over to come sit on the couch with them. “It’s nothing to worry about, I promise. We just had a…tiff with you-know-who.”

Lydia pressed her lips together. “He told me,” she admitted. “He told me what happened. I was the one who told him to come back up here.”

She could have sworn the two adults blushed. They certainly weren’t making much direct eye contact anymore.

“A-ah…” Adam said, glancing down at his hands. “Well. That’s probably for the best. Not the him telling you part, but the part where you made him come back up here. Better he come up here now than wait for a whole week for us to finish a prank we never pulled in the first place. Not that it’s not okay that you know!”

“It’s fine,” Lydia waved him off. “It’s weird but it’s whatever. Par for the course in this house.” She took a moment to smooth out her skirt. “So…it wasn’t a prank then? You actually asked him to date…both of you guys?”

Barbara gave her a semi-forced smiled and shrugged. “Yeah, we did. It didn’t really go well.”

“I can’t believe he thought it was a joke,” Adam muttered.

Lydia raised an eyebrow. “Really? No offense, but how else did you think he was going to take it? The guy didn’t even have _a_ friend until he came here. It doesn’t excuse anything he’s done, but he’s not the most self-confident guy I know. Hell, Delia’s more secure than him sometimes.”

The couple blinked at her. “He told you that?”

Lydia coughed out a laugh. “Of course not. He’d rather come back to life again and die _again_ before he talked about his ‘feelings’ which he insists he doesn’t have because he’s a demon. Can’t you tell? He revels in all the crappy things about himself because that’s all he has.” She glanced down. “Besides, I kind of know how he feels.”

That got her a very Concerned Mom and Dad Look and both of them seemed ready to lecture her on how wonderful and special she was, so she jumped to amend that. “Not so much anymore! But when…when my mom died, I felt like the only parts left of me were the bad parts. The angry parts, the sad parts. And I shoved them in everyone’s face and pretended that made me feel better. It was easier to act like I liked them than to admit to myself that there wasn’t any good left.”

Barbara set a soft hand on her shoulder and pulled her close. “Oh, Lydia. I think you really are the smartest one in this house. You shouldn’t have to be.”

Lydia shrugged, pressing her face into Barbara’s side. She was softer than her dead mom had been, but it was still nice. “’s fine. It’s kind of fun too.”

“You do know that’s not true, don’t you?” Adam asked, always worse than Barbara at keeping a strong upper lip. “There’s so much good in you. You’re the heart of this house.”

Lydia felt her eyes burn a little. This wasn’t really what she’d come up here for and she was still working on believing things like that, but she nodded anyway. After she was sure she was more composed she pulled back, straightening her bangs. “So Beetlejuice huh? I don’t see it. At all. But it’s fine.”

The Maitlands laughed.

“Well, it might not happen,” Adam pointed out, sighing. “We were trying to convince him we were telling the truth, but it was like talking to a brick wall.”

Lydia understood the feeling. “He’s like a million years old. That’s a long time to get stubborn over something.”

The two ghosts hummed in agreement.

“Look, don’t tell him I said, like, any of this. But, you know. I don’t know how serious all this is but no one’s probably ever loved him before,” Lydia pointed out. “For good reason some of the time, maybe but still.”

Barbara and Adam both grew more serious at the comment, the reality of that washing over them.

“We probably need to talk to him after he’s calmed down a little,” Barbara thought aloud. “Any other advice, smarty pants?”

Lydia laughed. “Just be honest with him. Seriously, if this is just you experimenting or whatever he’d probably be down, but tell him that. His dumb little demon feelings are kind of fragile. You know where to find him.”

The couple nodded, feeling moderately guilty about receiving advice from a teenager.

Lydia, for her part, decided her helping-adults duty was done for the day and stood. “Anyway, I need to go do my homework since Beej lost our bet and doesn’t get to eat it.”

Barbara chose to overlook that that was a possibility for the moment. “Okay. Thank you, Lydia. We’re here to return the favor anytime if you’d like. We’re always happy to listen to you.”

Lydia allowed herself to feel a bit of assurance in that. “I know.”

\- -

The Maitlands gave it another hour or so before they headed out for the roof which was Beetlejuice’s dedicated sulking spot. The sun was setting for the day, turning the sky orange and a familiar-looking red. Soon Charles and Delia would get home and dinner would be made, like usual. For all the changes they’d gone through, Adam and Barbara couldn’t help but still like a good routine.

Beetlejuice was on the far side of the roof, looking purple. Adam and Barbara exchanged a reassuring look and then moved forward. The demon snapped to attention when he noticed them (they’d been trying to be fast but neither of them much liked being on the roof seeing how one accidental slip would land them in a whole lot of trouble) and curled further in on himself to the point where it didn’t look very natural.

“What do you two want?” he grumbled. “Come to apologize? Feeling bad about not quitting while you were ahead?”

The Maitlands sank down on either side of him, not responding until they’d more or less closed him in.

“We are sorry,” Barbara said, catching herself at the last second from continuing with _for hurting your feelings. _“We didn’t mean to cause any kind of misunderstanding.”

Beetlejuice eyed her suspiciously from where he’d been pressing his face into his arms which were wrapped too-many-times around his shoulders. “Well, that kind of thing tends to happen when you lie directly to someone’s face.”

Adam gripped harder onto the roof tiles. “We would never intentionally hurt you, you know?”

The demon scoffed. “You didn’t _hurt _me. I was just…offended by how lame you guys were being. You never lean into a below-the-belt joke; everyone knows that. That’s just in bad taste.”

Barbara fought back the urge to argue. That was another issue for another time. “Either way, we came to apologize, but also to tell you again that we are not lying. It’s not a trick or a joke—”

“Seriously?” Beetlejuice unwound all at once to give her an incredulous look. “What did I literally just say to you about—”

“Just let her finish,” Adam requested, earnest enough that it didn’t come off as demanding. “Then if you want, you can kick _us_ off the roof.” He blinked. “Metaphorically. Not literally. Please.”

Beetlejuice seemed to consider it. He huffed and crossed his arms, but eventually growled out a, “Fine.” It still wasn’t great, but it was lightyears better than his reaction would have been even six months ago. It made Barbara feel better about all of this.

“You’ve changed a lot in the past year you’ve lived here and so have we,” Barbara went on. “We’ve all grown a lot closer and, well, Adam and I have talked about it for a while, but our feelings turned in the direction of romantic and have been that way for a little while now. We see how hard you’re working to be better.”

“You’re great with Lydia,” Adam piped up. “She’s still working on things too and you can put a smile on her face sometimes when no one else can. You keep everyone from getting too uptight about anything.”

“You keep us all on our toes,” Barbara agreed, and then grinned unable to help herself. She knocked her shoulder lightly against Beetlejuice’s. “And you’re cute too.”

Beetlejuice shrunk back from her and continued to pointedly not make eye contact. His brow had furrowed as they spoke like he was struggling to understand what they were telling him. Barbara hurried along, not wanting to drag it out.

“And we don’t really know what we’re doing either. But…we’d love to try if you want to.”

“You can say no,” Adam pointed out and Barbara hurriedly nodded along. “But you’ve got to at least know that we’re serious about this. About you.”

Beetlejuice’s eyes flicked between them and he looked like he was working himself up to saying something. “I don’t…really get it,” he finally landed on.

Barbara did her best not to voice her sigh and looked out toward the horizon. Lydia was right. She wasn’t sure why they’d thought this would be any sort of easy. “Look at it this way. Do you want to be with us? Don’t think about anything else. Just answer the question.”

Beetlejuice looked her way again. Some of his purple was fading out but it wasn’t quite headed back toward green yet. “Yeah, of course I do. I seriously could not be more obvious about it. Liking you guys and teasing you is one of my defining character traits.”

“Well, we want that too,” Adam said. “Simple as that.”

“Oh,” Beetlejuice said, which wasn’t much but it was progress.

\- -

The issue was, Beetlejuice still didn’t really get it. He didn’t get those things Adam and Barbara had been saying to him and he still had a hard time believing they were telling the truth. Not that he had a lot of experience with this stuff. Demons didn’t really _do_ that kind of thing. Still, he went inside with them, his mind churning as he tried to come up with some kind of better explanation for all of this.

They were headed for the couch when he snapped his fingers. “I got it!”

The Maitlands turned to look at him. “Got what?” Barbara asked.

“You guys are possessed!” Beetlejuice said, jabbing a finger at the two of them. “Some creep snuck in through that Netherworld door I keep telling you guys to get rid of—”

“It’s _your_ door,” Adam muttered and was promptly ignored.

“—and now you’re possessed!” Beetlejuice nodded to himself, rubbing his chin in thought. “Yeah, it all makes sense now. We’ve gotta un-possess you guys right now and you can tell me who did this so I can go kick their ass!”

He rushed over before either of the ghosts could say anything and slapped a hand down on each of their shoulders. He closed his eyes and if he focused he could tell if there was another spirit inside of someone. However, both Adam and Barbara felt just like their usual selves. There was no other force there. Which meant either he was really getting out of shape or…

Beetlejuice dropped his hands down and took a step back. “Damn,” he grumbled. “I thought I finally had it. It sounded good though, didn’t it?”

When he looked up the Maitlands were exchanging a look that didn’t exactly seem impressed. He frowned and floated up into the air a few feet, curling his legs underneath him.

“We get that maybe it’s hard for you to believe,” Barbara told him, looking up at him with those big brown eyes of hers. Beetlejuice looked away, unable to hold the eye contact, “but we are 100% serious. No jokes, no pranks, no possession, no nothing.”

“We swear,” Adam agreed and after a moment’s hesitation held out a pinky. “Pinky promise.”

Barbara gave him a strange look before comprehension crossed her face and she was quick to copy him.

Beetlejuice eyed them suspiciously. He knew how powerful that thing was so this was no laughing matter. Something wriggled uncomfortably in his stomach (maybe it was just bugs but he always tried to chew them thoroughly before swallowing to avoid that issue), but he wanted to know for sure. So he drifted down and locked pinkies with the couple, one after the other. Then he watched them as closely as possible, waiting for them to break down and confess.

Nothing happened.

Beetlejuice sank back down onto the floor and then fell over onto the couch. He looked down at himself. They were serious. Like that time he’d forgotten to put that sandworm back on Saturn serious. He struggled with the idea and didn’t have much success. It wasn’t really easy to believe something that so entirely contradicted everything he believed about himself and the world.

Dual weights sank down on either side of him. He almost disappeared and went somewhere else. He didn’t like feeling like this in front of anyone else, all gross and vulnerable and weird. Still, something held him in place.

“Do you finally believe us?” Adam asked hopefully.

Beetlejuice looked between them. They were both so attractive and _nice_ and perfect for each other. Maybe they were a little boring sometimes, but people actually liked them and wanted to be around them. Hell, Lydia had liked them the moment she met them. It’d taken months for him to get that far and he still felt like she was annoyed with him more than anything about half the time. They’d figured stuff out and changed for the better without anyone having to bring them to life and kill them again to do it.

It was like that one time he’d tried to put a puzzle together and the first two pieces had fit together great and in his excitement he grabbed another one and tried to make it do the same thing but it didn’t actually go there it just looked like it did, but at the point his pride was on the line because he’d picked it up so confidently and so he’d jammed it in anyway and then it looked wrong and he decided puzzles weren’t for him and spent the rest of the day switching around pieces from different boxes in department stores.

“I know you’re telling the truth,” Beetlejuice finally settled on. “But I don’t get why you’d ask _me_. Unless…” he knew he was grasping at straws but at that point he was desperate. “Is this just a sex thing? Is that what it is? And you guys are too disgustingly innocent to just say that?” That would maybe make sense. At least he had something in the way of maybe too much knowledge to offer in that arena.

“No!” Adam and Barbara said, both looking panicked.

“I mean…that is…” Adam stuttered.

“Not predominantly,” Barbara offered. “Like I said before. Romantic. Like dating.”

Well, there went his last vestige of hope that he could understand all of this. He drooped again. “But I don’t know anything about that stuff.”

“We can show you,” Adam reassured him, setting his hand carefully on Beetlejuice’s shoulder. “It’s not hard.”

“You don’t have to ‘get it’ completely right now,” Barbara added, mirroring the motion. “Or even soon. We’ll all be in it together, figuring stuff out. We can show you what we know and…” She took a breath, blush creeping up on her cheeks. “…you can show us what you know. As long as you believe us. We can like you even if…” She paused. “…even if other people don’t.”

Beetlejuice turned that over in his head. It sounded way too good to be true, which, in his experience, meant it definitely was and unless he wanted to look like a stupid idiot that got his hopes up, he’d better fuck off and get out of there right then. Something buried deep down inside him ached pitifully and he fought the urge to smash it immediately. Staying in his head wasn’t helping so even if he hated to let show any of the chaos going on inside of him, he spoke aloud. “Other things have been changing…so maybe this can change too?” He glanced frantically between the ghosts, looking for assurance or rejection or anything.

To his surprise they both met him with smiles. “Of course,” Barbara nodded. “That’s the spirit!”

He couldn’t help the warm feeling that filled his chest at the response. He wasn’t used to people smiling at him. It was all getting to be a lot so he was glad when Lydia yelled up at them that it was time for dinner. Beetlejuice leapt to his feet and hurried to cover it. “Woah, I am starving. How about you guys?”

Adam and Barbara didn’t seem very convinced but they let it go to his relief. “I could do with some food,” Adam agreed.

“We’ll keep talking a little afterward, okay?” Barbara said, seeming pretty serious.

Beetlejuice felt like he’d done something wrong and was getting scolded, but he nodded and hurried ahead of them downstairs. One more time, he bargained with himself. He’d try one more time and if this didn’t work out—well, he didn’t know what he would do but he had some ideas.

Yeah, that was it. One more shot. At least he could enjoy it while it lasted.

\- -

Dinner passed semi-normally. Charles prodded Lydia about school until she gave up a few scraps of information which the adults at the table eagerly ate up. Delia talked about her current art project when the gaps of silence started to make her nervous. Lydia kept glancing over at Adam and Barbara curiously but was thoroughly ignored. Beetlejuice was smiling to himself a little. It was a shy expression for him. He didn’t always eat with them, but when he did he usually wasn’t so quiet.

Lydia nudged him with her foot. “What are you doing with your face?” she asked. “It looks weird.”

Beetlejuice seemed to come back to himself and stuck his tongue out at her. “_Your _face looks weird all the time!”

“Well, your face looks dead _and _weird, and you lost our bet earlier so you better pay up, loser!”

The other four couldn’t help but settle some at the clamoring. That actually did feel more normal. After dinner Delia drug the guys off to look at her work, apparently desperate for any feedback. She’d gotten Lydia and Barbara earlier so they hung back to do the dishes.

“So I take it it went okay,” Lydia said as she placed another dish in the dishwasher.

Barbara gave her a close-lipped smile and shrugged. “Probably as well as it could have. He still doesn’t believe us, but at least he doesn’t think we’re lying anymore.”

“You think he’ll say yes then?” Lydia prodded further. It wasn’t like she was interested in gory details but she liked to know what was going on, especially with people she cared about.

“Probably,” Barbara said, scrubbing hard at one of the plates. “It’ll be tough, that’s for sure. I don’t think it’ll be easy to convince someone who doesn’t think they can be loved that you love them.”

Lydia pressed her lips together and didn’t mention the slip. She set a bowl down. “It’s cool of you to try.”

“You don’t think it’s weird?” Barbara asked, one side of her lips curling up.

“Oh no, it’s weird,” Lydia said. “Like I said I don’t get it. Like at all. But it’s kind of nice. Families can always grow even if a lot of people don’t think so. It’s kind of like having Delia around. I kind of have three parents now. It’s strange, but it’s not bad.”

Barbara laughed. “Well, I appreciate your honesty.”

Lydia shrugged a shoulder. “He’s the worst sometimes, but he is my friend. It’d be nice to see him happy.” She meant it, weird or not. She’d keep teasing him about smiles and stuff like that because that was a language both of them understood, but she knew what she meant by it. Hopefully he did too.

\- -

“So what now?” Beetlejuice asked, sitting cross-legged on the rug. Dinner had given him a chance to chill out a little and he felt better overall. He’d joked with Lydia and made fun of Delia’s weird sculpture a little and now he was totally refreshed. And by refreshed he meant repressing all the annoying emotions he was having for later when he could take them out on the spiders that liked to live under the house.

“Well, we were making a rule list,” Adam said, going across the room to dig out the notebook from wherever it’d been chucked. “But we thought you should be there for it.”

“Why?”

“Because it affects you too,” Barbara pointed out. “Like we said, we want to treat you like an equal.”

“But I’m not,” Beetlejuice pointed out. “You guys are already married.”

“Aha!” Adam crowed holding up the notebook. “And yeah, but this is a new relationship we’re forming with all three of us. It’s different from the one between Barb and I.”

Beetlejuice scratched his head and discovered the beetle he’d left up there for later. He popped it in his mouth and crunched it. The Maitlands both made a face.

“Speaking of rules,” Barbara said, taking the notebook and kneeling down onto the floor as well. She presented it to him. “Number one, no exceptions, is that you want to be at all physically intimate with us—and that includes just holding hands and kissing—you’re going to have to take showers occasionally. And brush your teeth.”

Beetlejuice groaned. “Do I have to?”

Adam sat down too. “Yes. Not all the time, but sometimes. You’ve gotta meet us in the middle.”

Beetlejuice felt torn between what he was being offered and having to scrub himself down. He liked the dirt. It gave people something to be distracted by that he put there himself instead of paying attention to the rest of him.

“…fine,” he grumbled.

“It’s really not that bad,” Barbara reasoned. “You might even like it.”

Beetlejuice seemed unconvinced but they moved forward, telling him about the few ideas they’d had already. He listened relatively attentively for him even if he, at one point, pulled an enormous pencil out of thin air and pretended to take notes on a very tiny notepad.

“That’s all we have so far, but we’ll keep working on it,” Barbara told him. “We can edit it whenever.”

Beetlejuice liked that. Strict rules and him didn’t really get along. “What about touching and that stuff? There’s nothing on there about that.”

“We’ll…ease into that,” Adam said, fidgeting a little. “Slowly.”

“If you’d do it front of Lydia, it’s probably fine. Otherwise you should ask,” Barbara suggested, knowing Beetlejuice took Lydia’s friendship too seriously to make a joke out of the statement.

He only looked a little disappointed which was probably as good as they were going to get. “Okay... What happens if I break one of the rules?”

Barbara glanced over at Adam. “Depends?”

“Depends,” he agreed. “If it was on purpose or not. We’re talking about this because these are important to us.”

Barbara nodded. “If it’s an honest mistake we’ll get past it one way or another. If it’s on purpose we’ll probably need to take it more seriously.”

Beetlejuice considered that. “So it’s a deal? Like I don’t break those rules and I can stick with you guys?”

_Not really_, Barbara thought, but knew better than to voice it. “If it helps you to think of it that way right now, sure.”

Apparently it did because some of the tension left the demon’s shoulders after that. “Cool,” he said and held out a hand. “Wanna shake on it? Or we could seal it with a kiss.” He winked at them.

Barbara rolled her eyes but secretly felt a little relieved. At least he was acting like himself again.

“We’re not done yet,” Adam pointed out, choosing to ignore the statement as he often did when he was flustered and get on with things.

“What do you mean?” Beetlejuice asked.

“You haven’t told us what you want from this yet,” Adam pointed out. “Or any rules you want to add.”

Beetlejuice’s eyebrows drew together. “What I want? Aren’t I getting that already? I be good and I get to be with you guys.”

“We mean like boundaries,” Barbara tried. “Or things you don’t want us to do.”

There weren’t really any lights turning on from that, but Adam was undeterred. “You can add stuff later as you think of it.” He went to flip the notebook shut but Beetlejuice stopped him, reaching out and grabbing his wrist.

“Wait.” He took the pen and paper and very slowly scribbled something down. Both ghosts furiously repressed the urge to reach out and help him with it. He flipped it around when he was done and showed them.

It read, in very messy script: “No lieing to Betelgeuse”

“Okay,” Barbara said. “Here I have one too.” She wrote it quickly and showed it: “No lying to Barbara”

Adam took it next and took a bit longer for some reason. They soon saw why: “No lying to Adam unless it’s about something really gross (e.g. no more stories about biting into bugs and them squirting juices across the room).”

Barbara and Beetlejuice both laughed.

“What? That was a great story! Lydia loved it!” the demon complained.

“Then just tell it to Lydia instead of me next time,” Adam suggested, shuddering.

Barbara just laughed at him again and the three of them thought that maybe this would be alright after all.

\- -

The rest of the night passed quickly. The three non-living residents of the house descended to spend time with the living ones. Lydia asked Barbara for help with her chemistry homework. Charles prodded Adam for more information about the town (he was considering other business ventures since the last one hadn’t worked out so well). Beetlejuice floated around Delia’s studio and pretended to seriously critique her work while she furiously took notes on what he was saying.

Sooner than later, people started heading to bed. Delia was, strangely, an early to bed early to rise type, and after she’d chased Beetlejuice off quite effectively by thanking him profusely for all the help he’d given her, she bid everyone goodnight. Charles tended to follow where she went and headed after her soon enough. Lydia stayed up a little later but retreated to her room before 11pm.

“Can’t be up too late,” she pointed out, hefting her camera up to show them. “I’m doing a series on cemeteries at sunrise.”

“Sounds interesting,” Adam told her.

“Show it to us when you’re finished!” Barbara called.

And then it was just the two of them. Well, three but Beetlejuice had retreated somewhere or other after Delia’s vicious gratitude attack. Barbara smiled at Adam and pulled him into a hug. “I love this house.”

Adam hugged her back tightly, rocking them back and forth. “I love it too.”

It was a short while before they pulled back and when they did, Adam caught Barbara off guard by stealing a kiss and winking at her when he pulled back. “Ready to go up?”

That was downright suggestive in Adam-language, although Barbara doubted that was in the cards that night. Still, it was something to think about for later. She grinned at him. “Let’s go.”

They didn’t see Beetlejuice immediately when they got upstairs so they set about getting ready for bed as usual. The demon had shown them enough to at least help them materialize a few other articles of clothing for themselves. It wasn’t really necessary for them to sleep, just like it wasn’t necessary for them to eat, but they liked it. Neither of them particularly enjoyed being up all night when everyone else was asleep. It was kind of lonely.

“Hey guys, quick quest’,” Beetlejuice announced when they were about finished, waltzing in through a wall per usual. “Do you know how to tell if a possum is pregnant? Or if a possum is female? Or how to catch a possum? Or—woah, sorry.” He spun around as if he’d caught them completely naked. “I didn’t know you guys were going to sleep already.”

Barbara purposefully didn’t think about his previous line of questioning at all. “Beej, you can look at us. We’re just in our pajamas.”

Adam finished pulling on his sleepshirt. “Well, now we are.”

Beetlejuice peeked over his shoulder and slowly turned. Barbara could have sworn he looked a little pink but it was dark in the attic so maybe she was wrong. There was a stretch of silence in which all of them considered the situation. “So do you guys got any possum info or should I let you go be unconscious all night?” He said it like he wanted to ask something else but hadn’t gotten up the nerve.

“No…possum info here,” Adam said, “but…” He glanced over at Barbara who nodded. “If you want to—and if you clean up a little—you could stay here with us tonight instead if you wanted.”

“To sleep,” Barbara added. She knew he did sleep sometimes, usually in the middle of the day in patches of sunlight like a big cat.

“Uh…I guess?” Beetlejuice shrugged. “If you want. I did have a whole night of possum hunting planned but I could probably reschedule.”

“Get over here,” Barbara said before he could go on, having had enough of beating around the bush for one night.

Beetlejuice went. He glanced down at himself. “Uh…I don’t have to take a whole shower do I?” He knew he could technically just be as clean as he wanted but he didn’t know if that was good enough.

“Just make it so you don’t smell too bad and you won’t leave stains on the sheets,” Barbara suggested, already climbing into the bed.

Beetlejuice bid his dirt goodbye for now and waved a hand in front of himself, getting rid of a majority of it. He mimicked what Adam was wearing: t-shirt and boxers. It felt strange to be out of his usual suit get-up. He shuffled over and offered a wrist to Adam who eventually—and very hesitantly—sniffed.

He raised his eyebrows in surprise and nodded. “Wow, I’m impressed.”

“You clean up nice,” Barbara added from where she was already under the sheets and meaning it.

Beetlejuice glanced down at himself and still sort of missed the grime. “Hey, don’t butter me up for nothing. I thought you said sleep only.”

“You can compliment someone without wanting to sleep with—I mean, go to bed with—ugh, you know what I mean.” Barbara gave up collapsing back onto the pillow.

Beetlejuice took a short running start and jumped onto the direct center of the bed, nearly sending the other two flying in the process. “Sex!” he provided, still bouncing. He cackled when he saw the looks on the others’ faces before he crawled back down to the foot of the bed. “Maybe I’ll make that my rule. You guys can’t be scared of that word. That one’s not even bad.” He curled up down there. It was cold but he could deal with it, at least until the Maitlands fell asleep and he could sneak back out and go possum wrangling.

Barbara huffed at him. “I can say it. There’s just no need to be unnecessarily crass.”

“Cr_ass_,” Beetlejuice repeated quietly, laughing to himself.

“No fucking until we say so,” Barbara said loudly which shut the demon right up.

“Wow,” he said, peering up at her. “That’s the sexiest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

Barbara kicked him under the covers.

Adam couldn’t hold back his laughter any longer. “What are you doing down there anyway?”

Beetlejuice squirmed away from the offending foot closer to Adam instead and looked confused. “What do you mean? Where else would I be?”

“Not at the foot of the bed?” Barbara suggested. “You’re not a dog.” She patted the bed between her and Adam.

The demon sat up and peered between them incredulously. It was darker now than before in the room since Adam had waved the lights off at some point. “You sure?”

They both nodded firmly enough that slowly but surely he went. He sat up straight and stiff, facing them. Barbara thought he tended to do a good job of seeming larger than life, particularly with all the hovering around above people that he did, but in reality he wasn’t really that big of a person. Being. Whatever. He was shorter than both of them and curled up like this you could really tell.

“When was the last time you slept in a bed?” Adam asked and it might have come off as rude if his tone wasn’t so curious and his face wasn’t so open. He was good at that—asking honest questions without ever seeming haughty about it.

“Uh, I dunno. Like, a few hundred years ago?” Beetlejuice guessed. “They’ve gotten a lot better since then.” He pressed down on the soft mattress. “Seems like someone figured out how to make it more comfortable than just sleeping on the floor.”

Adam laughed. “Yeah. There are whole mattress stores now.”

“Seriously?” Beetlejuice scurried closer to him, looking legitimately intrigued. “You guys got one of those here? You think Lydia would show me it?”

“I’m sure she would.” And without much fanfare, he reached up to press a palm against Beetlejuice’s cheek.

The demon shrank back from it at first instinctively, but Adam held steady and eventually he relaxed and leaned into the touch. Barbara smiled as she watched. She thought vaguely that he was kind of like a stray dog in some ways (and then quickly waved the thought away because technically they were dating now and it was weird as it was). It would just take time. Already that was better than earlier.

Adam let go after a few moments and slid down further under the covers, yawning. “I’m bushed.”

“Me too,” Barbara agreed. When Beetlejuice still didn’t move, she grabbed his hand and pulled him over, lifting the covers up and nudging until he went where she wanted him to go. She looked over at the other two and grinned. Something felt good about the three of them all safe and tucked in together. “There.”

Beetlejuice ran his fingers along the sheet over top of them and poked at the pillow, being quieter than usual and looking a little out of his depth. He settled some between them. “It’s soft.”

Barbara nodded. It wasn’t like Beetlejuice could be completely absolved of the things he’d done. He still had a long way to go but there was always something deeply satisfying about giving simple pleasures to someone who hadn’t had them maybe ever. Feeling brave, she leaned over and pecked him on the lips before she settled down onto the mattress and pressed up against him.

“Warm too,” she added. He was soft and warm. She loved Adam to pieces but sometimes he could be a little pointy. For all the hardness he projected, Beetlejuice certainly seemed like the type of person who was inherently nice to hug.

“Hey,” Adam complained. “Me too!”

She was ready for him when he leaned over and kissed her. It wasn’t long but it was nice, reassuring.

Adam followed Barbara’s lead and kissed the demon—who still seemed a little frozen from shock—currently sandwiched between them before he too laid down properly. Barbara was right. It was warm. He reached over Beetlejuice to catch Barbara’s hand and keep hold of it. He sighed and relaxed.

“Are you…trapping me here?” Beetlejuice asked, squirming a little between them. It felt nice to have them on either side of him, safe somehow (not that he needed these two wimps to protect him. He was a scary demon, after all), but it was alien to him as well.

“Yes,” Barbara said, muffled from where she was pressing her face against his side. She squeaked when Adam managed to poke her under the arm.

“She’s kidding,” Adam said, concerned about making him feel cornered. “You can go if you want to.” He paused. “Do you?”

Beetlejuice thought about it. It would be easier. He wouldn’t have to deal with all the feelings worming around inside of him if he just got up and left. But, he thought, he might get to kiss them more if he stayed. If he just didn’t think about it it would probably be fine. “No. I’ll stay.”

“Good.” Adam’s arm which was across his stomach squeezed tighter for a brief second.

They were holding onto him only loosely at the moment but Beetlejuice couldn’t help but imagine what it would be like if both of them clung onto him like that, surrounding him with their soft bodies and something he thought was probably “affection.”

“I was just kidding about the trap thing,” he said before he could overthink it. “I don’t care if you guys lay on me. I could pick both of you up with one arm.”

Fortunately for him, the Maitlands were getting better at reading between the lines and knew that “I don’t care if” tended to mean “I like it when…” They both moved and settled more heavily on top of him, curling tightly together.

Barbara poked at his side. “Snug as a bug?”

Beetlejuice laughed. “Is that a real thing or did you make that up?”

“Goodnight,” Adam said pointedly, pulling the sheet up over his head.

“I made it up,” Barbara whispered to Beetlejuice conspiratorially.

The demon was, needless to say, very impressed.

“She did not!” a voice hissed from below the sheets.

“Backstabber.” Barbara nudged him under the sheets with her foot.

Beetlejuice wasn’t sure anymore who was right or wrong, but he was feeling that feeling again that he’d had right when he was first alive before things had gone really downhill. Like into hell downhill. Adam and Barbara laughing and smiling and joking around him made him feel happy too.

He wrapped his arms more tightly around both of them as they all finally settled in for the night. Sure, he was still scared that it might not last but at the moment it didn’t seem like it was going away anytime soon. That was good enough for him.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! I'm glad so many people liked this silly little story :^)


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